having and holding
by irnan
Summary: Ron and Hermione get married. Harry takes it fairly well, except for the part where they make him organise the wedding.


_this is a disclaimer._

_**AN:** Hilarity Ensues. I made up the Wizarding Tradition of getting the best man to organise the wedding in a Lily/James fic I wrote once because the thought of Sirius organising their wedding amused me ;) Wikipedia says that in the Victorian language of flowers, heliotrope meant devotion._

**having and holding**

They were half way through yet another argument about the wedding venue and the probable bridesmaid's dresses - oh, have it here, Ron, just like Bill and Percy - when Ron thumped his hand on the kitchen table top in high dudgeon and said, "Mum, it's Harry's decision, he's best man."

There was an astonished silence.

"He's right," said Bill, grinning. "Ancient and honourable wizarding tradition."

"But," said Mrs Weasley, disappointed.

"You what!" said Harry, horrified.

Hermione plastered a firm look over the blazing delight on her face at the prospect of the out Ron had just offered her. "You'd better get this right," she threatened. "Although I'm still going to choose the dresses..."

"What do you think I'm going to do, make you get married in a miniskirt?" Harry said, but the joke came on automatic and he was looking at Ron pleadingly. Do not make me do this.

Ron sat back in his chair and glared at him, arms crossed over his chest. Better you than Mum.

"It was the bridesmaids I was worried about," said Hermione and glanced at Gin.

Harry rallied valiantly - or tried to. "Only one of them I'm interested in."

"Bloody hope so too," said Ginny. "But I'll wear a miniskirt for you if you want."

"_Ginevra_."

"And," said Ron, using his Auror voice, "no Aunt Muriel."

"No fair," said Bill. "If I have to have her, so do you."

"She didn't come to Percy's," Ginny said reasonably.

"She didn't come to Percy's because she knew Percy would give her no cause for complaint, muttering, side-eyeing, indignation or indigestion," said Bill. "Ron and Hermione, on the other hand..."

"I'm not having that woman mouthing off about my skinny ankles during the wedding ceremony," said Hermione firmly.

"I'm not having that woman present," said Ron, back with the Auror voice. "Harry, say something. I've seen you looking healthier in hospital beds."

Harry didn't doubt that. Organise a wedding! The only two he'd ever so much as been to were Bill and Fleur's and Percy's to Audrey. Not the first thing did he know about organising one. Catering and venues and priests and God alone knew what else.

But Hermione was twisting her hands in her lap, and the tips of Ron's ears were turning pink.

Harry chucked the towel in, metaphorically speaking, and eyed the kitchen up for another glass of cider. Under cover of the table, Ginny patted his thigh encouragingly... and, perhaps, a little lingeringly, the sort of touch that said _I am proud of you_, and promised demonstrations of the statement.

It went a certain way to reconciling him to the entire business, he had to admit.

* * *

><p>"Cake!" said Ginny.<p>

"Your Mum?" Harry asked hopefully. He was sitting in a snowdrift of wedding invitation envelopes and feeling increasingly understanding of Hermione's annoyance about Mrs Weasley's requests to invite this cousin and that Great-Aunt.

Ginny glared at him.

"Note to self," Harry said. "Find decent wedding cake bakery."

* * *

><p>The witch in the Diagon Alley Owl Post Office looked askance at Harry's piles of invitations until he said, with what he'd thought of since age eleven as his getting-information-out-of-releuctant-people smile, "Weddings, you know."<p>

Two days later, it was all over Witch Weekly. Nancy Milligan's Seeker reflexes were probably the only reason Harry hadn't had to arrest his own girlfriend for unprovoked assault on Rita Skeeter, although how anyone in the world could have called it _unprovoked_ assault and kept a straight face while they were doing it was of course another question.

"No I bloody well am not getting married!" he yelled out into the Leaky Cauldron after the fifth time someone had stopped by the table to ask him that evening, and then, because Ron and Neville were smirking their stupid faces off, he climbed onto the chair and waved his beer glass in a wide arc. "Ladies and gentlemen, I have the very great honour to announce to you all that I have been given a very great and wonderful title, an acclamation I treasure more than any other in the world!"

"Merlin your vocabulary's changed since school," said Neville, grinning.

Harry ignored him. (Although it was true that the process of writing mission reports had instilled in him a certain fondness for the OED, especially once Robards had agreed to start publishing the minor ones in the Interest Of Governmental Transparency.) He let the pause hang there for a dramatic minute more and then pointed at Ron.

"Best man!"

Two days later, _that_ was all over Witch Weekly. Hermione wouldn't speak to him for a week.

* * *

><p>"<em>You<em>?" said Mrs Granger. "Organise the _whole thing_?"

"Apparently it's an ancient and honourable wizarding tradition," Harry said. It was impossible to feel offended by the look on her face when it was so perfectly expressive of what he himself was feeling.

"Oh dear." The look slid suddenly into indulgant amusement - there was the Mrs Granger he was more used to, viewing Hermione's life as a witch with a more detached fascination. "Well, I'm a little relieved. We'll pay for it, of course -"

"Certainly not," Harry said indignantly. "They've got a slush fund. Hermione is always prepared for everything. Including her own wedding."

"I - ohh. It is non-magical tradition, you know."

"I know. But really, Mrs Granger - it'll be fine."

"Hmm."

But she nodded, offered him the plate of biscuits. Harry took one, cheerfully forgetful of Andromeda's strictures on not snacking between meals.

"Thank you. Anyway, I'm really here to ask about invitations - you know, extended family, any old friends..."

"No," said Mrs Granger. "No. There's you and there's Ron. Hermione was never all that interested in people who weren't either fictional or several centuries dead until she went to Hogwarts."

Harry grinned. "Hah, well. I think my favourite conversation before I came to Hogwarts was with a snake."

* * *

><p>Astoria Greengrass-Malfoy sent a note of congratulations.<p>

Harry hmmed and hawwed over it for a fortnight before he sent one back.

* * *

><p>Andromeda said they should use Grimmauld Place. The refurb was long done but it could do with a sort of final exorcism, she said. Happiness and light. Set the bastards properly spinning in their graves. After that it could go back under the dust sheets if Harry still refused to sell it.<p>

Harry did. He had an idea that half the reason Sirius had left him the house in the first place was because he didn't trust anyone else with it.

* * *

><p>"What about Hogsmeade?" Ginny said.<p>

"Why Hogsmeade?"

"Because," she answered, amused.

"Why not the school?"

"What, in the library?"

"On the Quidditch pitch."

"No. Hogsmeade."

* * *

><p>"Oh, I give up. There's supposed to be like a language of flowers or something, isn't there?" Harry asked at the florist's. The girl behind the counter shook her head amusedly over the Boy Who Lived's confused ideas and said kindly, "What do you want to say to them?"<p>

Harry hmmed. "Well, I'm only the best man."

"But if you're arranging the wedding, it's a kind of gift from you to them."

He glanced up. She was smiling at him, a little.

"It is, isn't it."

"Yep."

"Well. All right then."

He paused. She waited. Ravenclaw-blue nails and a streak of purple in her dark hair that made him think of Tonks.

"I love you, I guess," he said at last. "You two are without a doubt the only reason I'm still breathing, let alone standing here, and whatever it takes to make you both happy, I hope and suspect you already have it. If not, I'll get it for you."

"Oh!" she said. "Heliotrope." And turned away, just quickly. "Hang on. I'll - I'll sort something out. Pictures. Examples bouquets. Whatnot."

* * *

><p>Ginny chose her own dress and went with a dusky dark blue, shimmery-shiny as the lights dimmed. It flaunted her scars; she always said they were meant to be seen.<p>

Harry's opinion, personally, was that they were meant to be kissed; not erogenous, dear God no, but... maybe defiant.

Maybe that was a sort of flaunting, too.

* * *

><p>"Well. I'm, uh, I'm not very good at speeches - people keep offering me opportunities to practice but I always turn them down. I think maybe Hermione's regretting that right now."<p>

Ripple of laughter.

"So. There's - I don't think there's much I can add about these two, you know. I mean, about how much they love each other, and what they've been through, and what it took to get here. When you get right down to it it took a bloody war to get here, a near-death experience. Of mine. Several times."

Laughter again. Ron and Hermione were holding hands. Ginny was chewing on her bottom lip in that way she had when she was trying not to cry. Neville and Luna were both smiling.

"So I'm not going to talk about - what they are to each other. That's their business, not yours, and also really bloody obvious by now. Probably really bloody obvious by age fourteen, actually."

Hermione groaned softly. Ron rolled his eyes. Everyone was still smiling. That was good, right? Smiling. Amusement.

"So what I am going to tell you, instead, is that no one - no one I've ever met deserves to be happy more than Ron and Hermione. They've done far more for me than I could ever explain to you, let alone repay, and all they asked for in return was for me to organise this wedding. Well, that makes it your own damn fault, doesn't it?"

Less laughter this time, and what there was of it was slightly choked.

"So," said Harry, and then realised he'd used that word about six times already. "In other words. Be happy. Both of you. Always. I think you already are. I think this wedding is an intermediate declaration, not a beginning. I think -" He paused.

"I think you are, without a doubt, the two best, kindest, most honest and most loving people I have ever known," he said. "For every time that I ever felt you both deserved a bash over the head with a Beater's bat and a long confinement in a small dark space, there were half-a-dozen more when you were - when you brought out the best in each other, and in me, and in so so many other people. _Thank you_."

Hermione was crying.

"Ron and Hermione, ladies and gentlemen."

They drank - well, everybody else did. Harry was busy being hugged by the happy couple.

(Two tables down, Ginny was crying into Luna's arms.)

* * *

><p>"That was a lovely speech," Ginny said that night.<p>

"Was it?" Harry asked anxiously. "Oh, there's a blessing. I was a bit-"

"I daresay people who don't know you three were quite unaffected," said Ginny.

"But you cried like a waterspout."

"Yes. Hmm. What to say at ours?"

"Ours? When's that?"

Ginny shrugged. "Whenever we can be bothered, I suppose."

* * *

><p>The shimmer-dress was hung up neatly in their wardrobe; Ginny wore it again for Christmas.<p> 


End file.
